From the desk of Felix Middendorf

If you are flying with a smaller airline into Boston Logan Airport (BOS) and something went wrong with your luggage, you might be out of luck. A company named Aviation Port Services (APS) might be subcontracted by your airline to handle your bag. At the time of writing (September 2016), Eurowings, Norwegian and Air Berlin all subcontract APS.

As you will soon find out, Aviation Port Services is a very disorganized and unprofessional enterprise. It might take them more than two weeks to find a bag that they misplaced themselves. Despite promising otherwise, they will not call you back. They might not enter the information you provide in Worldtracer, the worldwide baggage tracing tool. Even in case they tell you that your bag will be shipped to your hotel, they might decide not do it in order to save on costs. It will all be your responsibility to route around their idiosyncrasies in order to get your bag. In my case, it took almost three weeks, two trips to the airport, a bunch of luck and probably a triple digit number of phone calls to (a) get my case number and (b) get my luggage bag. I think I spent about 2 working days in total dealing with APS.

Along the way, I have learned a lot. Among other things, I have learned a number of telephone numbers that I chose to disclose so that you as a passenger have at least a slight chance to deal with this irresponsible company when they lose your property or withhold it from you. Here is the list; good luck! You will probably not have much luck in the morning hours – I have found that there is a higher success rate after 1 pm.

+1 617 569 2405 number I was given when I filed my PIR report, but seems to be only voicemail – try calling, but do not waste to much time and money on this number

+1 617 567 1289 contact for Aviation Port Services at BOS – I talked to Linda, who seemed quite helpful but ultimately did not succeed in helping me get in touch with the right contact

+1 781 817 0557 apparently “operations” – this is the number from which they called me when they left voicemail, but the people answering the phone were neither helpful nor polite

+1 781 817 9446 Maria, who is supposed to be in charge of L&F baggage – I believe that she has left the company by now, but maybe her successor “inherited” this number

+1 617 749 6544 Victor Martinez – supposedly a manager in charge at BOS – I think I was never able to reach him

+1 617 749 6916 Alvin – very professional, curteous and helpful, but was very hard to reach – he agreed to ship my luggage to my hotel, but his superiors overruled this decision

+1 617 415 6115 I don’t know the name, but the person answering was able to send someone (Alvin) to the airport’s entrance hall to deliver my bag to me

+1 857 249 0023 apparently a “red number” of the operations team – are very surprised and unhappy when customers call, but might refer to someone who can help when bothered by customer calls

Moreoever, I have had multiple very positive experiences with the airport’s “public service representatives” who work in the information booths at Terminal E. They might be able to support you with tracking down someone at APS, but you will need to help them help you by providing the list of phone numbers above.

It feels good to know that tomorrow, when I wake up, I can diverge from the daily routine of the last few months. I won’t be sitting at the desk in my room, a cup of coffee and a text editor being my only company. I won’t ask myself the question whether the last three sentences are good enough. And most certainly, I won’t worry which chapters still require some refinement. Why is that?, you ask.

Well, I handed in my master’s thesis today. Consequently, this new year’s eve does not only represent the end of 2011, but also the end of my studies of Information Systems at the Otto-Friedrich-University of Bamberg. I still have to defend my thesis in a colloquium on January 18th and could fail in theory, yet it feels as if everything were already over.

The chapter Life and Studies in Bamberg closes. A few more pages, a few more paragraphs and there will be a new heading. What will it be?